Asean Super League 'in couple of years'

Posted Friday, June 24, 2011 by YAHOO Sport

SINGAPORE (AFP) - A Southeast Asian Super League aimed at drastically improving football in the region could become a reality within just a "couple of years", a senior marketing official said Friday.

Andrew Georgiou, chief executive of World Sport Group which has a marketing deal with the Asean Football Federation (AFF), said the body was now looking closely at the proposed club competition.

"The AFF has appointed a sub-committee to study it," Georgiou told AFP.

"The critical thing is we've got to make sure it supports local football.

"We don't want to cannibalise the local leagues. We want to provide an intermediary step between local leagues and the national team, because the ultimate goal is to improve the quality of the national teams."

Georgiou said it was up to the 11-country body's associations to approve the competition, which would feature one or two teams from each nation in a contest similar to the UEFA Champions League or Asia's AFC Champions League.

Despite football's massive popularity in Southeast Asia, the region's national teams fare poorly with Thailand, its top-ranked team, sitting 120th in the FIFA world ratings.

"Not one Southeast Asian national team qualified for the Asian Cup (in Qatar this year), not one Southeast Asian team has got within a bull's roar of qualifying for the World Cup," Georgiou said.

"The quality of the national teams is poor, and the reason it's poor is because the quality of club teams is poor."

But he said a wealthy new competition in the growing, but still largely impoverished region would help clubs lure better players and improve wages, which in turn would reduce match-fixing and boost national performances.